PHILADELPHIA — The Internal Revenue Service is quietly moving to loosen the once-inviolable privacy of federal income-tax returns.

If it succeeds, accountants and other tax-return preparers for the first time would be able to sell information from individual returns — or even entire returns — to marketers and data brokers.

The change is in a set of proposed rules the Treasury Department and the IRS published in the Dec. 8 Federal Register, where the official notice labeled them “not a significant regulatory action.”

The egg-sucking dogs who have managed to turn the Federal government into a mountain of waste (both fiscal and human) are now trying to turn a buck by selling YOUR INCOME TAX RETURN to the same data merchants and marketing whores who call you during dinner to “give” you another Visa card.

This is just another in a long line of examples of how we’ve completely lost control of our government. “By the people and for the people” has been replaced by “abusing the people anytime the Feds feel like it and for whatever nefarious whim comes along.”

I’d say write your legislators about this, but since they’ll probably be getting kickbacks off the deal, what’s the point?